Scene: At a family dinner with extended relatives. Foucault (F) and Deleuze (D) are a gay couple and the parents of two adopted children, Fanon (Fan) and Spivak (S). Spivak is Foucault’s daughter from a previous relationship, and she has kept this knowledge from him.

Foucault and Deleuze are proprietors of this unconventional family, one that breaks down notions of family, couples, and children. They are attempting to reach a BwO. They are unaware of their self-privileging and obvious contradiction of the subject/power dynamic.

Fanon, as the Black Adopted Son, is “the Colonized,” who are represented only in terms of the Western world. The inferiority complex of the colonized that Fanon writes about is reflected in the character’s actions and muffled speech (critique on language).

Spivak in the role of the adopted daughter is the subaltern who cannot speak (or isn’t heard). Epistemic violence manifests itself physically in her actions, and in her character’s knowledge of her relation to Foucault.

Everyone sits at one long table. Foucault and Deleuze sit at the center, Fanon and Spivak are at either ends (representing the “center” and the marginalized).

The conversation:

F – Deleuze, I feel that we have embraced ourselves and our role as intellectuals in expressing our sexuality and by having two adopted children whom we have seamlessly woven into our family fabric.

D – Indeed, we have used our intellectualism and our bodies to obliterate subjectifications. Perhaps the workers’ struggle is beginning to wane. Don’t you agree, kids?

Fanon considers this, and while chewing on his last bite, takes another big bite of a biscuit. As he speaks, his voice is muffled and food is flying out of his mouth

Fan – I don’t believe that the familial process has been smooth at all. Now, I am the adopted Black son of two gay men. Your adoption of me, as a child and sans my consent I might add, has made me into what you see me as; no longer am I what I was. My self-identity is definite but not what you define me as. I may be sitting and speaking at the same table with you, but your conversation is different from mine. The ease with which you’ve identified yourself as gay, parent, and intellectual, masks me as adopted, son, and other. The subject has been reinforced.

Spivak becomes visibly frustrated and angry. She speaks in a loud, violent and aggressive tone.

S – It is just as Fanon says! Your perceived notion that the role of intellectuals is no longer to create Knowledge is inadequate. You say there is no place for representation, speaking for someone, or representation, re-presenting someone, but that is exactly what you are doing! Do you understand? Your discussions have taken us, the marginalized, and kept us there! Even at this very table!

She violently stabs a piece of chicken with a fork.

Spivak – I need to tell you something, for a long time now. Foucault, I am your biological daughter.

Foucault and Deleuze stand up together. From the perspective of the audience, they look much larger than Fanon and Spivak.

F – Fanon, you don’t speak with your mouth full. And Spivak, go to the other room!

S exits, Deleuze addresses the rest of the relatives at dinner.

D – I apologize for her behavior. Her friend committed suicide. It was horrible for her and she’s been going through some tough times.

A philosophical frame of mind. Generally we strive to acquire one emotional stance, one viewpoint for all life situations and events: we usually call that being of a philosophical frame of mind. But rather than making oneself uniform, we may find greater value for the enrichment of knowledge by listening to the soft voice of different life situations; each brings its own views with it. Thus we acknowledge and share the life and nature of many by not treating ourselves like rigid, invariable, single individuals.

Puar critiques intersectionality as the “primary rubric for theorizing difference” (p1 in pdf). Intersectionality defines an individual by the intersections of its differences based on gender, race, class, etc. What is problematic is that intersectionality continues to create and define differences, which remains in the discourse of subject and other-ing.

Then there are theorists who ask “how the body is materialized, rather than what the body signifies” (6). This is in the ontological framework of how we “be” (as Christina puts it). Representation is problematic. Instead, “bodies are unstable assemblages that cannot be seamlessly disaggregated into identity formations” (5). For assemblage, human and subject is not primary. Signification is not the only thing that defines something. It is the “variation to variation” of interactions; “matter is not a ‘thing’ but a doing” (7). Assemblage is not about the subject, it is about the “connections” (6).

In intersectionality, the action of intersecting has to occur between differences to create a subject. This action/motion/event of intersection is what links the theories of intersectionality and assemblages. However, this action creates only potential, not subject. We can’t keep creating subjects, so we’re trying to figure out the “pre-individual” or how matter/energies (ultimately) form a subject. I had to read this section a bunch of times: “the relationship of positionality to affect, feelings, and sensations is arbitrary” (10). It is arbitrary that I am “female”, there is no such thing as a “female” energy/feeling, but as events unfold, I become female.

Puar believes it is not either/or, either intersectionality OR assemblages, but that it is part of a process in understanding the relations between discipline and control. She is concerned about the “disciplinary subject and its identitarian interpellation” (10).

The full paragraph on page 11, to me, is a definition for socialization.

“Therefore, to dismiss assemblage in favor of retaining intersectional identitarian frameworks is to miss the ways in which societies of control apprehend and produce bodies as information…”

Whether it’s through signification, or affect, or a combination of both, our behaviors have been shaped by this way. We can call this practice a form of discipline, or it can be seen as a way of control. Who knows? Either way, it moves beyond the binary of intersectionality and assemblage.